A3000D, Cloanto 3.X, bad floppy?

[Castellen]

Has anyone had success with the "official" Cloanto 3.X ROMS on an A3000D?

Unsure if this is at all related to your issue, but I had a customer recently send an A3000D board for repair with some new Cloanto v40.55 EPROMs.  Ignoring the original faults which were fixed, the board worked fine using a set of v40.68 test ROMs or standard OS2.x masked ROMs.  But with the official Cloanto ROMs, operation was very unstable and erratic.  Frequent crash/lockup using bare basic Workbench or even the early startup screen.  I don't think I got to the point of testing floppy disk access in this state.  

The ROM data appeared to read out OK, so there didn't seem to be any obvious programming issues with them as the usual ASCII strings looked normal, seemed to be more timing related.  Even with the ROM timing jumpers set to the longest possible time, it was still unusable.  Operation was even less stable with any faster ROM access timing configured, often failing to even get to the early startup screen.

I wasn't sure of the history of these new EPROMs, perhaps they had been damaged in some way or one of the devices had a legitimate fault from new, so I suggested the customer contact Cloanto for a replacement set under warranty.  Haven't heard the outcome from this yet as it was a fairly recent job.

[Castellen]

Dumb question, but what's an  "official" Cloanto 3.X ROM?  Never heard one referred to in this way.  Is this something someone burned with the data from Amiga Forever?

No, he's referring to physical EPROMs which were purchased from a legitmate source and have Cloanto labels on the devices that have a licence code which you can register on the Cloanto website to download a copy of that ROM image.



@jupo42
I just noticed that I happened to still have a copy of the data I read out of the v40.55 ROMs in question when diagnosing the said issue.  The data is certainly valid as a checksum recalculation matches the ROM data.  Besides, the machine would red screen otherwise.  And I got the v40.55 image working on UAE and floppy support works.  I could flash the image into a pair of 55nSec test devices and check on actual A3000 hardware, but I suspect it'll be fine.  Probably nothing wrong with the contents.

Just a theory at the moment, so don't go giving anyone grief, but it's possible that the EPROMs being sourced for these Cloanto labelled ROM sets don't actually meet the minimum access timing for the A3000.  The EPROM access speed is shown in a section of the part number etched on them, e.g. 27C4000-12 = 120nSec.  I didn't see what was on the said suspect devices, as I didn't want to peel off the sticker and void the customer's warranty.

In saying that, I've seen a number of instances where grey market component vendors alter the manufacturer's laser etched device part numbers, so you're actually getting something different to what's shown on the part.  Again, I have no evidence to say that this is the case here.

Contact the place you bought them from in the first instance.  If multiple customers are having the same issue, then they need to look at their source of blank parts.  Feel free to refer them to this thread or pass on my contact details.  It's in everyone's best interest to sort this out if it's going to be an ongoing problem.

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